John Curtin and Journalists, 1941-1945©
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International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 10 • No. 12 • December 2020 doi:10.30845/ijhss.v10n12p5 Communicating Compassionately in a Crisis: John Curtin and Journalists, 1941-1945© Caryn Coatney, PhD. Journalism Lecturer University of Southern Queensland Education City, 37 Sinnathamby Boulevard Springfield Central, Queensland 4300 Australia Abstract Professional communicators face more demands to develop caring and trustworthy relations with journalists. Corporate leaders increasingly need to develop skills in communicating compassionately with news teams during a largescale crisis or public emergency. Recently, scholars have been advocating for a historical approach in using the lessons of previous successes in crisis communication. One of the most acute emergencies in history has been the Second World War. Although often overlooked, the war generated remarkable innovation in political leaders’ engagement with the media. Relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Australian wartime prime minister John Curtin’s exceptionally close relations with journalists from the US, Canada and Australia. His journalism- oriented ethos was forgotten as post-war leaders developed the technique of delivering impersonal, unidirectional news conferences to the largely undifferentiated mass media. Scholarly interest has recently resurged into communicators’ compassionate performances as they deliver personalized messages to audiences. This paper uses rarely researched archives that finds among the wartime leaders, Curtin elevated journalists’ roles to convey public appearances of being a caring prime minister, good neighbour and citizens’ friend. This conception of ethos is useful for the study of communicators’ roles in portraying compassion, trust, and friendship towards journalists during an extended crisis. Keywords: Crisis communication, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, journalism, John Curtin, leadership communication, media relations, World War II. Introduction Crises are often testing grounds that make or break long-lasting professional relations between managers and journalists(Waters, Tindall & Morton, 2010). The relationship is especially significant for professional communicators because the potential for misinformation is immense as journalists continuously report on the outbreak of an emergency(Young, 1999).Often, textbooks advise that professional communicators need to be credible, compassionate and committed towards journalists and disclose information openly to foster a shared culture between the two groups. Therefore, expressions of compassion have become the typical fare of crisis communication as leaders try to persuade journalists to relay reassuring messages to citizens during escalating crises(Auer, 2020). For their part, journalists frequently report that they have mixed reactions to interacting with professional communicators because of their need to be detached, distant observers when reporting on a crisis(Rios, Hinnant & Park, 2009). There is also a risk that leaders may use times of crisis and urgency to promote their individual authority over journalists and overlook the valuable communication lessons learned from previous events (Faessel, Falk & Curtin, 2020).As Young (1999, p. 9) writes: “On a long view managements do not learn from history as much as they might. They live, don‟t learn and let die. The whole system has to be overhauled and hindsight turned into foresight.” The lessons of history are often difficult to learn because these are not simple formulas. This study focuses on one of the most critical events in crisis communication, the Second World War. This was an era when major forces converged, including the rise of democratic leaders who were well-versed in public speaking, the growth of communication technology and engaged, media-savvy citizens. The era was often forgotten in post-war communication studies that mostly viewed impersonal, one-way forms of communication to the largely undifferentiated mass media (Craig, 2016). More recently, researchers have shown the value of more personalized, emotive and compassionate forms of communication during a crisis (DuBrin, 2020; Fisher, Iles & Herovic, 2020). This study re-evaluates the crisis communication techniques of wartime to glean insights for professional communicators. Behind the scenes, major leaders were deeply immersed in ways to befriend journalists during World War II. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King (1893-1950) carefully practiced radio scripts to cultivate a relatively new style of intimate, personalized talks to listeners (Baldoni, 2003; Bradenburg & Braden, 1958; King, 1893-1950). 36 ISSN 2220-8488 (Print), 2221-0989 (Online) ©Center for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijhssnet.com They relied on journalists to portray their compassionate leaderships and elicit citizens‟ endorsements. In a letter to Churchill(cited 1950, p. 200), Roosevelt commented on “that delightful god, which we worship in common, called „the freedom of the press‟”. Both Roosevelt and Churchill recruited journalists to be their media advisors and they developed extensive public relations units. In Canada, Mackenzie King (1939) unsuccessfully sought government backing to hire a journalist, and wrote in his diary: “What I need above everything else is a first-class modern journalist, full of vitality and colour, who would make my life and work known to the public” (p. 454). He complained: Men in the [public] Service think that once anything is on Hansard [the official report of parliamentary debates] that it serves the purpose, whereas Hansard is of really no value in reaching the public. The only thing of value is the press reports(p. 454). Leaders began developing interactive news conferences to signify compassionate governance. Yet it appears that no other wartime leader spent as much energy to cultivate journalists as Curtin.This study conducts a rare analysis of Curtin‟s news interviews, secret briefings and confidential memorandum about his relations with journalists from Australia, Canada and the United States. He shared war secrets with journalists in twice-daily news interviews during most of his prime ministership (Coatney, 2016). He gave more frequent briefings than those of the other Allied leaders(King, 1893-1950; Perloff, 1998; Tait, 2008). His intimate interviews were frequently obscured during the post-war style of leaders‟ large, impersonal media conferences (Craig, 2016). The role of personalized, political messaging has re-emerged during recent research into the mediatisation of politics, with leaders relying on the media to convey emotion(Davis, 2019; Fisher, Iles & Herovic, 2020). This article sets out to recover Curtin‟s journalism-oriented ethos to influence the news portrayal of his intimate, compassionate prime ministership. This study is informed by the conception of ethos in assessing Curtin‟s relations with journalists. According to Aristotle‟s concept of ethos, a speaker performs rhetorical acts to appear as „the good man‟ to citizens by signifying the traits of arete (virtue), phronesis (practical wisdom) and eunoia (a caring attitude). Aristotle advanced the term, ethos, for recommending a speaker‟s development of a personal character, or persona, to evince credibility among listeners. “Persuasion is achieved by the speaker‟s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible … character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses”(cited 2010, p. 7).Curtin emphasized the educative purpose of the classical performer‟s rhetorical display: “The one has a message to deliver. If the message is disliked, it has a mission to make it loved”(1917). This study is also based on the concepts of the public sphere and democratic governance developed by Habermas and Castells. The Habermasian ideal of the public sphere envisaged cooperative dialogue among equals as journalists dispassionately reported political views to citizens (Habermas, 1989, 2006). More recently, journalism studies have taken an emotional turn (Jorgensen, 2020). Increasingly, scholars have investigated the role of emotions in the public sphere, situating journalism as a form of emotional labor that relays compassionate messages to news audiences (Dworznik-Hoak, 2020; Thomson, 2018). According to Castells (2007, 2008), communication and information are fundamental sources of power in the public sphere. Politics can be staged for the media to create symbolic messages of trust about a leader so as to obtain citizens‟ support. The concepts of ethos and the public sphere are useful for exploring the meaning of power in journalists‟ representations of compassion and leadership. First, this article‟s literature review reveals gaps in the research of Curtin‟s relations with Allied journalists as a historical model for crisis communication. Secondly, this study outlines its methodological approach to ascertain his ability to persuade journalists to repor t favourably on his compassionate leadership. Thirdly, the findings are made that he expanded the nation‟s public sphere to involve more in portraying his role as a friend and neighbour to citizens. Literature Review Contemporary researchers have theorized that the notion of ethos extends to an audience‟s perceptions of a speaker‟s credibility. Communication researchers have drawn upon the Aristotelian traits of arete, phronesis and eunoia for ascertaining a speaker‟s ethos